Best Books About Traveling the World: 20 Travel Books for Every Reader

The best books about traveling the world are the ones that cover real distance: Paul Theroux taking trains from London to Japan and back, Nellie Bly racing around the globe in 72 days in 1889, Ted Simon riding a motorcycle through 45 countries. The list below mixes those trips with the memoirs, novels and planning books that show up again and again on lists of the best travel books for adults.

Twenty books follow in five groups: a single trip around the world, a classic of travel writing, a memoir, a novel or help planning your own trip.

Best books about traveling the world: the short list by reader

• The best book about traveling the world in one trip: Jupiter’s Travels, four years and 45 countries on a Triumph motorcycle.
• The classic most lists put first: The Great Railway Bazaar, four months by train across Europe and Asia.
• A short read for one flight: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, 126 pages.
• The funniest: In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson across Australia.
• The best travel novel to start with: Around the World in Eighty Days, the book Nellie Bly set out to beat.
• For anyone planning a long trip: Vagabonding, on saving, leaving and traveling slowly.
• For picking where to go: Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel List, 500 ranked places.

The best travel books of all time at a glance

Book	Author	First published	Pages	Where it goes	Type
Around the World in Eighty Days	Jules Verne	1872	247	London to London via Suez, Bombay, Hong Kong and San Francisco	Novel
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days	Nellie Bly	1890	126	New York to New York via Europe, Egypt, Ceylon and Japan	Nonfiction
On the Road	Jack Kerouac	1957	304	Across the US and into Mexico	Novel
Travels with Charley	John Steinbeck	1962	277	A 10,000-mile loop of the US	Nonfiction
The Great Railway Bazaar	Paul Theroux	1975	352	London to Japan by rail, home on the Trans-Siberian	Nonfiction
In Patagonia	Bruce Chatwin	1977	240	Argentina and Chile	Nonfiction
Jupiter’s Travels	Ted Simon	1979	456	45 countries by motorcycle	Nonfiction
The Alchemist	Paulo Coelho	1988	208	Spain, Morocco and Egypt	Novel
The Beach	Alex Garland	1996	448	Thailand	Novel
Under the Tuscan Sun	Frances Mayes	1996	320	Cortona, Italy	Memoir
In a Sunburned Country	Bill Bryson	2000	352	Australia	Memoir
The Art of Travel	Alain de Botton	2002	272	Egypt, the Lake District, Provence	Essays
Vagabonding	Rolf Potts	2003	240	Anywhere, for months	Planning
Shantaram	Gregory David Roberts	2003	944	Bombay (Mumbai), India	Novel
Eat, Pray, Love	Elizabeth Gilbert	2006	400	Italy, India and Indonesia	Memoir
The Geography of Bliss	Eric Weiner	2008	345	Iceland, Bhutan, Moldova, Qatar and more	Nonfiction
Turn Right at Machu Picchu	Mark Adams	2011	368	Peru	Memoir
Wild	Cheryl Strayed	2012	315	Pacific Crest Trail, US	Memoir
Ultimate Travel List	Lonely Planet	2020 (2nd ed.)	336	500 places worldwide	Planning
World Travel	Anthony Bourdain	2021	480	Destinations worldwide	Planning

Page counts are for the editions linked here. Other editions run longer or shorter.

Around the world travel books: one trip, the whole globe

Few travel books cover a full circuit of the planet. Two of these do, a century apart, and the third visits countries on four continents in search of the happiest one.

Jupiter’s Travels: 45 countries on a motorcycle

Ted Simon left London in 1973 on a Triumph Tiger 100 and came back four years later after about 126,000 km (78,000 miles). He rode through Africa, South America, Australia and Asia. The book came out in 1979 and is still the reference point for round-the-world riders. It reads well for people who will never ride a motorcycle.

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days: Nellie Bly’s race

On November 14, 1889, the New York World sent reporter Nellie Bly to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg. She traveled by steamship and train, stopped in Amiens to meet Jules Verne, and was back in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes. She carried one small bag for the whole trip. Her account is short enough to finish on a single long-haul flight.

The Geography of Bliss: a trip around the world to find happiness

Eric Weiner, a former NPR foreign correspondent, travels to countries that rank high and low on happiness research, from Iceland and Bhutan to Moldova and Qatar. Each chapter is one country and one theory about why people there are happy or not. It suits readers who want ideas along with the places.

Classic travel books that defined the genre

The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) and In Patagonia (1977) are the two books usually credited with reviving travel writing in English, and both still top lists of the best travel writing books. Both are here, along with Steinbeck’s American road trip.

My first job, at a guidebook publisher in Barcelona in 2007, came with a rule from the editors: a guidebook tells you where to sleep, and travel writing tells you why to go. The books in this section are the second kind. None of them will help you book a room.

The Great Railway Bazaar: four months by train

In 1973 Paul Theroux took trains from London through Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Southeast Asia to Japan, then rode the Trans-Siberian home. The book sold 1.5 million copies after it came out in 1975. Most of the book happens in sleeping cars and dining cars, in conversations with other passengers. In 2008 he retraced the route in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.

Among the best travel books Reddit readers recommend, Theroux comes first. In an r/travel thread on favorite books about travel, the top answer named him and this book as the place to start, and Bill Bryson came second, with the advice to pick the continent you care about.

In Patagonia: short chapters from the end of the world

Bruce Chatwin went to southern Argentina and Chile looking for the origin of a scrap of skin his grandmother kept in a cabinet. The book jumps between his trip and the stories of the people who ended up there: Welsh settlers, Butch Cassidy, Boer families. It won the Hawthornden Prize in 1978. Read it before a trip to Ushuaia, Punta Arenas or Torres del Paine.

Travels with Charley: a road trip around the United States

In 1960 John Steinbeck drove about 10,000 miles around the US in a camper truck he named Rocinante, with his poodle Charley. He wanted to see whether he still knew the country he wrote about. Later research showed he stayed in hotels more often than the book suggests, so read it as a portrait of 1960 America rather than a diary.

Best travel memoirs: one place, one person

A travel memoir follows one writer through one country or one long walk. Each of these five stays in one place you can visit.

In a Sunburned Country: Australia, the funny way

Bill Bryson crosses Australia by road and on the Indian Pacific train from Sydney to Perth, with stops in Alice Springs, Uluru, Darwin and the Great Barrier Reef. He spends a lot of the book on what can kill you there. In the UK it is called Down Under.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Bingham’s 1911 route

Mark Adams, a magazine editor with little hiking experience, retraces the 1911 route Hiram Bingham took to Machu Picchu, guided by an Australian survivalist. The book came out on the 100th anniversary of Bingham’s expedition. It covers Vitcos, Espíritu Pampa and Choquequirao as well as Machu Picchu, with the history a guidebook leaves out.

Wild: 1,100 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed hiked about 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone in 1995, after her mother’s death, with no long-distance hiking experience. It is a book about grief more than about the trail. It appears on nearly every list of the best travel books, even though the whole trip stays in California and Oregon. It was the first pick of Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and became a film with Reese Witherspoon in 2014.

Eat, Pray, Love: a year in Italy, India and Indonesia

After her divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert spends four months eating in Rome, four in an ashram in India and four in Bali. It remains the best-known memoir about traveling alone after a divorce.

Under the Tuscan Sun: buying a house abroad

Frances Mayes and her partner buy Bramasole, an abandoned villa outside Cortona, and spend summers restoring it. The book is about kitchens, markets and builders more than about sightseeing. It spent more than two and a half years on the New York Times best seller list. It is the book for people who want to live abroad, not just visit.

Best travel novels set in real places

These five novels are the ones travelers recommend most, and each is set somewhere you can visit.

Around the World in Eighty Days: the original

Phileas Fogg bets his fortune at the Reform Club that he can circle the globe in 80 days, then sets off with his servant Passepartout by steamer, train and, for one stretch in India, elephant. Jules Verne serialized it in 1872. The Oxford World’s Classics edition linked here uses William Butcher’s translation and adds notes on the book’s geography.

The Alchemist: a short push to go

Paulo Coelho’s fable follows an Andalusian shepherd who crosses to Tangier and the Sahara on his way to the pyramids of Giza. At 208 pages it is the shortest novel here. It has been translated into more than 65 languages.

Shantaram: 944 pages of Bombay

An escaped Australian prisoner lands in 1980s Bombay and stays, living in a slum, working for the mafia and running a free clinic. The novel draws on Gregory David Roberts’s own life, though how much is true is disputed. It is the longest book on this list and the one backpackers in India pass around most. Apple TV+ adapted it as a series in 2022.

The Beach: the backpacker novel

Alex Garland’s 1996 novel follows a young traveler from a Bangkok guesthouse on Khao San Road to a secret island community in the Gulf of Thailand, and what happens when the secret gets out. It is a story about the backpacker trail wrecking the places it finds. Danny Boyle filmed it with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000, on Koh Phi Phi Leh’s Maya Bay.

On the Road: the American road trip

Jack Kerouac wrote the book about his trips across the US with Neal Cassady in the late 1940s, renamed Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. They go from New York to Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans and finally Mexico City. Modern Library ranked it 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Books for planning your own trip around the world

These four are inspirational travel books with a practical use: they help you decide where to go, how long to stay away and what you want out of it.

Vagabonding: how to take months off to travel

Rolf Potts’s 2003 book is a guide to long-term travel: how to save for it, how to explain it at work, how to travel slowly and how to come home. It has gone through more than 30 printings and is often cited as an early influence on the digital nomad movement. It has no maps and no itineraries.

Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel List: where to go first

Lonely Planet ranked 500 places and experiences with votes from its writers and readers, with Petra in Jordan at number one in the 2020 second edition. Each entry has a photo, a paragraph and practical notes. It works as a bucket list and as a coffee table book. For more books to keep on display, see our best travel coffee table books.

World Travel: Anthony Bourdain’s last book

Bourdain started this guide before his death in 2018, and his longtime co-writer Laurie Woolever finished it. It covers the places he returned to, country by country, with where he ate, how to get there and essays from friends and family. Use it to plan meals more than sights.

The Art of Travel: read this before you leave

Alain de Botton’s essays ask why trips often disappoint and how to see more when you arrive. Each chapter pairs a place with an artist or writer: Flaubert in Egypt, Wordsworth in the Lake District, Van Gogh in Provence.

Travel books by destination

If you have a trip booked, read the book set where you are going. This table pairs the main destinations on this list with a book.

Destination	Book	Why read it first
India	Shantaram	Bombay street life, slums and the Colaba district
Thailand	The Beach	The backpacker trail from Khao San Road to the islands
Peru	Turn Right at Machu Picchu	The Inca sites around Cusco and the history of the trail
Australia	In a Sunburned Country	The outback, the Indian Pacific and the wildlife warnings
Argentina and Chile	In Patagonia	The settlers and outlaws of the far south
Italy	Under the Tuscan Sun	Daily life, food and markets in Tuscany
Spain, Morocco and Egypt	The Alchemist	The route from Andalusia to Giza
United States	Travels with Charley or On the Road	The road trip, in 1960 or in the late 1940s
Several countries	The Geography of Bliss	Short chapters on Iceland, Bhutan, Qatar and others

How to choose a travel book for the trip

Length and weight decide more than genre once a book has to travel.

• Match the page count to the trip. A 120 to 250 page book (Bly, The Alchemist, In Patagonia, Vagabonding) fits a single flight. Shantaram, at 944 pages, lasts a two-week trip and takes up real space in a carry-on.
• Pack paperbacks. Hardcovers like World Travel and the Lonely Planet list are heavy. Keep them at home for planning.
• Read about the place before you go, and a novel while you are there. Nonfiction gives you history and context to look for. Fiction is easier to pick up in short sessions on trains and in airports.

A reading list by trip length, built from the books above:

Trip	Books
One flight	Around the World in Seventy-Two Days (126 pages), The Alchemist (208), In Patagonia (240), Vagabonding (240)
A week or two away	The Beach (448), Jupiter’s Travels (456), Shantaram (944)
At home, before you book	Ultimate Travel List for where to go, World Travel for where to eat, a book set in your destination

At a hostel in San Cristóbal de las Casas in February 2010, I swapped a finished paperback on the shelf by the front desk for a fat one with coffee stains. The shelf held a dozen copies of the same thick novels, left behind by travelers who did not want to carry them any further. Thin books travel on. Thick ones stay on the shelf.

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